The Toy Story movies by Walt Disney’s Pixar have been at the top of the list of best family movies for a generation. After a nine-year wait, Toy Story 4 was launched in theaters in June of 2019, and brought a brand new generation into theaters to see what was happening in the lives of family favorites Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of their beloved toy friends, like Jessie, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Rex, and more. It also included the return of Bo Peep, and some new toy friends, including Bonnie’s school-artwork-turned-toy friend, Forky.

The latest and last Toy Story adventure begins with Woody sneaking into Bonnie’s backpack to be sure that she is okay during her kindergarten orientation, despite the fact that he and his toy friends are aware that—unlike when he belonged to Andy—Woody is not Bonnie’s favorite toy. While in Bonnie’s classroom, Woody is aware of Bonnie’s anxiety in a new environment and helps her by sneaking her arts and craft supplies out of the trash after a classmate throws them away. Included in the pieces retrieved from the trash is a plastic spork, which Bonnie fashions into a toy with googly eyes and pipe cleaner limbs. Forky makes Bonnie feel reassured, and Woody goes through great pains to keep Forky close to Bonnie, despite the new “toy’s” confusion about the fact that he’s now a toy and not trash.
When Bonnie’s parents take her on a road trip in an RV to celebrate the fact that she’s about to start kindergarten, all of the friends come along on the trip, including the reluctant Forky. The whole gang embarks on an adventure that includes finding Bo Peep with her own new gang of unclaimed toys living in a busy fairground, and some run-ins with new toys, including a manipulating talking doll named Gabby Gabby who lives in an antique shop. Gabby has unfulfilled dreams of being purchased by a little girl, and thinks her dreams will become a reality if only she can get her broken voice box replaced by a functioning one—like the one that Woody possesses in his back.
Toy Story 4 is one of the best family movies to be enjoyed by all age levels, including some of today’s parents who were children when the original movie was released, and can now share the joy with their own children!

Matilda is one of the all-time best family movies. It was released in 1996 after being co-produced, directed, starred in, and narrated by Danny DeVito. Based on the beloved novel by Roald Dahl, Matilda is the classic story of neglected little waif against the cold world and cruel adults, only it was given the double refreshing twists of satirical exaggeration that we love in any work by Roald Dahl and the black comedy of some of Danny DeVito’s best roles.

In Matilda, we know immediately that she’s born an underdog, as her parents begin neglecting her from the moment they bring her home from the hospital with her car seat sliding around loose in the back of the station wagon while complaining about the bill.

As Matilda grows, she not only learns to take care of herself exceptionally well, including cooking her own meals, and self-educating with a voracious love of books from her local library, she also finds that her simmering anger against her neglectful and verbally abusive family is beginning to show itself as she’s able to make magical things happen around her through special powers.

When Matilda’s parents finally get around to enrolling her in school after her car-salesman father makes a deal with the child-hating principal of Crunchem Hall Elementary, Matilda’s world opens up and her true genius-level intelligence, as well as her telekinetic powers, are discovered by her sugary-sweet teacher, Miss Honey. Together, Matilda and Miss Honey take on the evil Principal, Mrs.Trunchbull, who is also Miss Honey’s aunt. Agatha Trunchbull mysteriously inherited Miss Honey’s family home after the suspicious death of Miss Honey’s father.

One of the best family movies to watch for a lot of laughs from all age levels is Shrek. Since it’s initial release in 2001, Shrek has been a favorite for children and their families worldwide. This computer animated film features the voices of some Hollywood favorites, including Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy. It also inspired several sequels that did a good job of living up to the high standards set by the original.

Shrek is a large green ogre who is harassed by the townspeople with torches and pitchforks but seems to take it all in stride by hiding in his home in a swamp. Until that is, his swamp is suddenly overrun with fairytale creatures who were banished from the kingdom by Lord Farquaad who wishes to be King. Shrek makes a deal with Lord Farquaad to retrieve Princess Fiona from her tower so Farquaad can marry her in exchange for the return of the privacy of his swamp. The princess was recommended to Farquaad by his magic mirror when he was seeking a princess bride to help him become king.

Joining Shrek on his quest is Donkey, a donkey who talks constantly—to the chagrin of the more stoic Shrek. Donkey’s constant chatter (voiced by Eddie Murphy) makes for many laughs throughout the film.

When the unlikely duo reach the tower where Fiona is imprisoned, they are surprised to find her guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. However, when the dragon turns out to be a girl dragon and she falls in love with Donkey, Shrek is able to rescue the Princess.

Fiona may be surprised that her long-awaited rescuer turned out to be an ogre, but since she is harboring a secret of her own, she finds that the kind-hearted ogre may indeed be a better match than Lord Farquaad.

Shrek is absolutely one of the best family movies to watch over and over. If it’s been a few years since you’ve seen it, it may be time to revisit this fun classic.

One of the best family movies today is one that will bring kids of all ages out of their rooms to gather around the TV and the popcorn bowl with its beautiful animation and uplifting music. Frozen II is the long-awaited sequel to the beloved Disney movie, Frozen. Released by Disney just in time for the holidays in November of 2019, the movie was greeted by happy fans of all ages after a seven-year wait.
In Frozen II, we rejoin Elsa three years after her coronation while she is celebrating the arrival of autumn in the Kingdom along with her sister Anna, Olaf, and Kristoff and his friend, the reindeer, Sven. Elsa follows a mysterious voice which leads her to unintentionally revive the ancient elemental spirits of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air in the enchanted forest after they had disappeared years ago following a fight with Elsa’s grandfather, King Runeard. The entire Kingdom is evacuated, and Elsa, Anna, and their friends follow the voices into the enchanted forest, where Elsa uses her powers to freeze a tornado-like wind, only to find frozen ice sculptures of people from her father’s past.
As they continue North, Elsa, Anna, and Olaf encounter a magical fire spirit that’s really an enraged salamander, and make a major discovery about events in Anna and Elsa’s mother’s past, as well as discovering the existence of a fifth spirit that is capable of uniting the people through the magic of nature. When Elsa continues the rest of the journey alone, she uncovers more truth about who she is, and the origins of her own powers.

Frozen II is one of the best family movies available today. Not only is it enchanting, beautiful, and rich with humor and music, it is also layered with more depth and nuance than the original and is sure to leave everyone feeling uplifted.

One of the best family movies for the holidays is The Polar Express, released in 2004 to much fanfare as one of the first and most realistic movies completely produced by computer animation. It stars the voice talents of Tom Hanks who gives voice to the conductor, a hobo, and Santa Claus, as well as three other roles and the movie’s narrator.

In The Polar Express, a young boy who is beginning to doubt the existence of Santa Claus wakes up to find a mysterious train has appeared outside his home on Christmas Eve. A conductor ushers him aboard (while still in his pajamas) and explains that the train is The Polar Express and is heading toward the North Pole.

Onboard the train, the boy is served hot cocoa and meets a little girl who is also aboard in her pajamas. The train stops for a little boy named Billy who is too afraid to board. However, when Billy changes his mind at the last moment, the boy gains the attention of the conductor when he applies the emergency brake to allow Billy to board.

While on route to the North Pole, the boy attempts to return the little girl’s lost ticket out of fear that she’ll be ejected from the train and ends up climbing onto the roof in search of the conductor. There he meets a mysterious hobo as the train speeds along, careening around dangerous bends in the track in an exciting, roller-coaster-like ride through the dark snowy landscape.

When the train arrives in the North Pole, a magical adventure unfolds for all of the children, and the little boy’s waning belief in Santa is completely restored in time for Christmas.

While this movie has some dark moments that could be a little scary for very young children, most kids will enjoy the roller-coaster ride of adventure and magic in The Polar Express right along with their parents. This is absolutely a must-see holiday movie for children and is one of the best family movies to watch any time your movie night needs a little magic.

Mouse Hunt has been considered one of the best family movies for more than two decades. It is a fun combination of black comedy and hilarious slapstick which was released in 1997 but remains one of the best family movies today. This is the perfect movie to watch for entertainment for all age levels including children, teens, and adults.
In Mouse Hunt, the Laurel and Hardy-like pair of unlucky brothers, Ernie and Lars Smuntz are left with a failing string factory and a mountain of debt after their formerly wealthy string magnate father dies. The crazy comedy begins with antics such as the coffin-bearers tripping on the stairs and flipping the corpse out of the coffin and into an open sewer grate and continues through the brothers’ epic adventure which begins with the discovery of an old estate left to them by their father. The gothic mansion turns out to have been built by a famous architect, Lyle LaRue, and the brothers find a chance at reversing their bad fortune by restoring the house for sale at an auction.
On their first night in the abandoned mansion, Ernie and Lars find that the house is inhabited by a very wily mouse. At first under-estimating their nemesis, the pair find that a simple mouse trap isn’t enough to catch a mouse that is determined to keep the house for himself. The mouse even manages to outsmart the very intense and battle-weary pest control man (hilariously played by Christopher Walken) hired by the Smuntz brothers.

As the battle between the brothers and the mouse escalates, the house itself takes many hits at the same time that the countdown to the auction is getting closer.

This is one of the best family movies for the entire family to enjoy. Parents will love the movie, as well as enjoying watching the kids love it. There are many moments that will have children laughing until their sides hurt, with excellent comedic directing by Gore Verbinski, and hilarious portrayals of the battle-crazed brothers by Nathan Lane and Lee Evans, as well as the final movie role of hilarious William Hickey as aged string Magnate, Rudolf Smuntz.

One of the best family movies of all time is the 1985 classic comedy adventure film, The Goonies. In this epic-level adventure, a gang of mostly-misfit friends gather at the Walshes’ home to discuss the end of the neighborhood as they know it, when a property developer plans to destroy homes to build a country club. While their home is being packed up for the move, the gang of Goon-Dock children who call themselves “The Goonies” find an old treasure map hidden in the back of a framed picture that is accidentally broken in the attic. The treasure map reveals more details about the rumored lost treasure located somewhere in the area thanks to infamous pirate, One-Eyed Willy.
In the process of following the clues on the map, the gang cross paths with a crime family, the Fratellis, who are hiding out in an abandoned restaurant. This results in a race with the (hilariously) dangerous family—including “Sloth” the youngest Fratelli brother who is both deformed and developmentally challenged, giving him a monster-like appearance, despite his sweet nature.
The map leads the Goonie gang into the dark caverns beneath the town where the whole gang, including the Walsh brothers Mikey and Brandon, their chubby friend, Chunk, Cheerleader Andy, Mouth, (played by a young Corey Feldman) Data, and others, encounter a series of aged booby-traps. Their chase for the treasure is complicated by dangerous traps, mishaps, a budding young romance, and a gang of murderous criminals, but it eventually leads to the nearly magical discovery of not only pirate treasure, but also a perfectly preserved pirate galleon, complete with skeletal pirates, including One-Eyed Willy himself.
This movie has not lost any of its edge or its classic appeal in the decades that have passed since its release. It’s one of the best family movies to watch with your older children and teens, though parents should be aware that some bad language and references may make it less appropriate for children under 10.

One of the best family movies of all time is Back to The Future, originally released in 1985. The two sequels following it, Back to the Future II and Back to the Future III also did not disappoint, but instead fully held their own when compared to the original.
In this Back to the Future Trilogy on Blu-ray, you get to enjoy all three binge-worthy movies presented in a box that’s designed to resemble the original VHS tape case. Pop some popcorn, order a pizza and get ready for hours of fun with the whole family—perfect for a rainy weekend indoors. These movies are wonderful to watch with a new generation of first-timers or to watch again and again as family favorites.
In the now-iconic Back to the Future, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a typical teenager in the eighties, dealing with an angry principal, an embarrassing family, and hoping to get the 4X4 truck he’s always dreamed of so he no longer has to hang onto tailgates to hitch a ride to school on his skateboard. When his old scientist friend, Doc, asks Marty for a favor, he finds himself filming Doc’s first experiment with a time-machine made out of a DeLorean in a mall parking lot. When terrorists seeking the plutonium that Doc stole from them interrupt the experiment, Doc is shot and Marty is forced to flee the scene in the DeLorean, only to find himself transported back to the 1950’s where he meets his teenage parents, a younger Doc, and other town characters in their youth. He finds that he has accidentally interrupted the course of history and prevented his parents from meeting and falling in love. Marty embarks on a mission to make sure that his mom—who has developed a teen crush on him instead of his father—falls in love with his nerdy dad so that he and his brother and sister will be born.
The epic time-travel adventure continues in Back to the Future II, when Marty and his girlfriend are taken by Doc into their own future to get their future son, Marty Junior, out of trouble with the law and some town bullies. Then, in Back to the Future III, Marty and Doc end up in the old west, where they become involved in saving Doc from his fate of being shot by the town outlaw, only for Doc to meet the love of his life.
This is absolutely the best family movie trilogy for a three-movie epic binge-watch that the whole family will love.

One of the best family movies today is the 2016 release of Disney’s The Jungle Book, based on both the series of books by Rudyard Kipling and the Walt Disney 1967 animated film. This movie is a combination of live-action and realistic CGI which is flawlessly combined to retell the story of Mowgli, an orphan boy raised in the jungle.
Man-cub, Mowgli, has been raised by the wolf Raksha and her loving pack led by Akela. As the jungle animals gather during the dry season to drink, the temporary truce is disrupted by a bengal tiger named Shere Khan. Shere Khan has a long-standing hatred for humans because he was scarred in a human-caused fire. He threatens to kill Mowgli when the truce of the draught period has ended, causing Mowgli to leave his pack under the guidance of his panther friend, Bagheera, in order to protect them from the wrath of Shere Khan.
During Mowgli’s journey, he becomes separated from Bagheera during a stampede and encounters both a huge and manipulative python who tries to hypnotise him into becoming his prey, and a friendly brown bear named Baloo who becomes Mowgli’s biggest ally and friend. The pair bond after Baloo saves Mowgli from Kaa, the python, after which Mowgli helps Baloo to retrieve some delicious honey in return for the favor. The pair embark on a journey through the jungle to bring Mowgli to the man-village, despite Mowgli’s reluctance. In the process, he’s kidnapped by monkeys, and reunited with Bagheera, who once again urges Mowgli to find his own people despite the fact that Baloo has become convinced that Mowgli should stay with him.

Disney’s The Jungle Book 2016, is a stunning remake of the original that outdoes even the beloved first movie. It’s sure to become a family favorite and is definitely one of the best family movies of the decade.

Home Alone was originally released for the holiday season in November of 1990. It remains a beloved holiday favorite two decades later and is one of the best family movies to watch around Christmas, or any time you need some lighthearted fun and Christmas spirit.

In Home Alone, Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is accidentally left behind when his busy family oversleeps the day of the family’s Christmas trip to London and has to rush out of the house for the airport. When his older sister takes a headcount before they leave home on the airport shuttle, she accidentally counts a neighbor’s child in the yard. Kevin’s absence isn’t noticed during the run through the airport or hectic boarding, and isn’t discovered until his family lands in London without him. His frantic mother begins a hectic fight to get home when all of the flights are booked.

When Kevin wakes up to find himself home alone, he enjoys having the house to himself and spends time doing all of the things any 8-year-old would do, including eating his fill of ice cream, jumping on beds, and getting into his brother’s things. However, his pleasure at having his very busy family away, is soon shaken when he realizes that a pair of bumbling burglars have targeted his home, not realizing that his family has left him behind.
The adventure that follows leads to an unrealistic, but hilarious battle between Kevin and the burglars which includes a series of very well-planned booby traps that have the burglars completely blindsided.
Besides being laugh-out-loud funny, Home Alone has some important underlying themes about the importance of family, as Kevin learns to appreciate his loud, busy family, and his family realizes that their youngest member may need more of their time and attention.

Despite this movie being received at first with some surprising indifference by critics, Home Alone has become a cult classic, and is considered by many to be one of the best holiday movies of all time. It’s absolutely one of the best family movies to watch in front of the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree with some hot cocoa. Or even if you want a little Christmas in July.